8:30 A.M.
I get in and check my e-mail. Someone wants to get a few new Macs and put them on the network. And they want to get it done by the end of the month. If my staff and I were Mac people, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Get caught up on this week’s Admin Diary entries:Read Monday’s installment
Neither my main desktop support guy nor I have ever really touched a Mac. Luckily, we’re not expected to support the few Macs in the office, but learning how to interface these new Macs with our mostly PC/Windows NT network is going to be an education. Even though we’ve finished all the Y2K stuff and have some time, trying to get it done before the end of the month will be extremely hard. I e-mail them back to let them know we’ll do what we can, but the chances of their request being fulfilled by the end of the month are slim.

8:45 A.M.
They clarify their e-mail and say they don’t expect the Macs to be done by the end of the month; they would just like to have the planning done. I know that’s not what the e-mail said. Oh well! That takes a load off of my shoulders for now.

2:00 P.M.
The day is going fairly smoothly. I take care of most of the requests that people had made the day before. I make a list of stops for the day. I try to get them in order so I don’t run around the office too much.

Most of the issues have already been taken care of by my desktop support guy, Bill, or they have disappeared through the user’s rebooting. The worst thing I run into is a user who is trying to get a file from a PC to a Mac. From my limited knowledge of Macs and their interaction with PCs, that doesn’t happen. The user is sure that it can be done and claims to have done it before. For some reason, it’s not working anymore.

I figure out that if I put the files in a .zip file, the Mac’s Stuff-it program can open it and extract the files. A lot of the formatting is gone, but it’s enough for the user to do what she needs to do. All in all, a very calm day for requests; my birthday is tomorrow—let’s hope it stays this way.

4:30 P.M.
After becoming thoroughly disgusted with my Palm PC, I finally order a Palm IIIx. I find a good price online, and I have a $20 coupon for a purchase at the online store, to boot. Out the door with second day air shipping—$224. Better yet, one of the managers will make up the extra shipping cost if I work on the modem for his Palm III. I hope I get it before the weekend because I’m planning to go to San Diego and want to take my new toy with me. Things are looking very good for tomorrow.
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